


When Everything Breaks

by Kira_Darkness



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Gore, Blood is mentioned a lot, But it Breaks, F/F, Female My Unit | Byleth, Gen, Sothis is here in theory, Time Travel, no specific time frame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:55:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27911104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Darkness/pseuds/Kira_Darkness
Summary: All around, it is a record on repeat. Sounds that have long since been burned into her mind; images that are forever carved into her eyes; and horrendous memories that are myths passed down from generation to generation.orWhen Byleth turns back time too many times, when does everything break?
Relationships: Edelgard von Hresvelg/My Unit | Byleth, My Unit | Byleth & Black Eagle Students
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	When Everything Breaks

**Author's Note:**

> So, for those who have read Fireteam: RWBY: remember when I mentioned another work that I wrote in the first person?
> 
> Yeah, this is it.
> 
> I literally wrote this for my creative writing class.
> 
> "Do what you will, this life's a fiction,/ And is made up of contradiction." -- William Blake
> 
> That was the response my teacher gave me. He responded with different quotes on every assignment, granted, but still, this one... huh.

The world flickers with life; vibrant, green, beautiful life. It is all serene and soft, gentle winds and calming sounds.

It pauses, birds frozen in time, deer jutting across and forever stuck.

And it all hurls back.

Byleth collapses on the grass, heaving like it is her only acceptable response. Her legs are torn from the inside, and her stomach churns with vile filth of ruined meals. Her arms offer little in leverage; they crack and split away, and she collides with the dried earth.

All around, it is a record on repeat. Sounds that have long since been burned into her mind; images that are forever carved into her eyes; and horrendous memories that are myths passed down from generation to generation.

She gulps hot air, searing her ripped insides. She stands - the only mechanical option left in her body. The crude bones are held aloft in her hand, and deep inside is a fire that has charred her. The weapon flashes like a brilliant sun, and she moves.

She does not know who she cuts down. She does not recognize them. It is all black and shadowed; direct sunlight does not illuminate their faces as she cuts them down. Their blood splashes, and it is also dry.

The record scratches again, and she lurches, everything coursing with the wind. Beyond is a blob of familiarity, etched in it every possibility of failure. She reads them all, calculates them with rushed ink, leaving splotches behind and she can only scream.

The blob morphs slowly into a shape – a new opportunity. The Sword of the Creator lashes out like her hand, and she can feel bones break on impact. The blob is finally alive, and Bernadetta stares with a confused fright at the man who has killed her before and she does not know.

And may she never know.

Again, Byleth’s body continues. More darkness corrodes her mind with each laceration. Her weapon is the sun, the moon, and the dawn, a flare that attracts nothing but pain and rage and she wields it with all her own lineage – copies from different times that are nothing but phantoms.

She is nothing if not feral, dilated eyes from seeing nothing but sorrow and magnificent brutality.

There is another blob that slithers and shivers on her approach, and more blood-soaked timelines converging in a single moment that tears away her flesh.

She does not remember what pain is like, only a dullness that will fade or fling her back. It ticks once more, and she is left with nothing in her stomach as she continues, the phantom pain nothing more.

Once again a new future, and again she secures it like a priceless treasure to be coveted. Dorothea looks at her with blood smeared porcelain – alive, and that is all she cares about.

Linhardt takes too many. Too many times she rewinds just enough because her focus is divided on the amount of pieces he becomes upon her failure. She tumbles once, another her leg shatters, and a third leaves her choking out of her own neck. He does not even acknowledge her, only a shriveling mess in red and green, a vacant noise that adds to her nightmares.

The battlefield draws her in further – more blurs come by, and she stings of unfamiliarity. Caspar is fresh; his screams will become echoes when she stares into the stars on the nights where she cannot sleep.

He does not become a blob; she does not etch those failures to memory – they will in time, and she clings to the moments where they do not.

Everything contorts unnaturally, and Byleth hits the ground several times on one occasion. She throws herself up: one is too wobbly; another her legs have vanished before she can try; third and fourth and nothing but fragments; and she only remembers after that the tenth because she gives up and throws the Crest-less weapon in nothing more than bleary fury.

Petra does little than smile her way, and she is afraid to commit it to the hell that is her psyche.

It is not she who retrieves her weapon, but Ferdinand whose smile is glossed over by shock as the blood pours from his stomach. She sits there crying until a foreign weapon splits her own stomach open, and she will remember the feeling of emptiness for eternity.

Hubert is the first responder when she gets it correct, eviscerating Ferdinand’s attacker with nothing but hatred that Byleth wishes she could conjure. The two are left alone and Byleth knows they are safe; she must believe they are or witness it again and again.

Nothing makes sense anymore. It all flickers around her and the darkness seeps into her eyes, burning tendrils slithering in with vicious glee. Everything is spots and blobs and red and green; colors mix in a blend of vomit that exits every wound that Byleth has accumulated through time and space.

But her hair still stands out.

White lightning is all that Byleth can consider as she continues, nothing but the pure _feeling_ behind everything that she has left behind.

Edelgard.

Blood Edelgard.

White Edelgard.

Blood Edelgard.

White Edelgard.

It’s a putrid mix that Byleth does not want to see anymore.

She continues to die with dignity, taking down the one who strikes her.

  
She continues to die for her friends and comrades, unknowing of Byleth’s intervention.

She continues to die, and her lilac eyes are the only descriptive quality about her that she can commit, for every other commitment washes away like the last of the color on Edelgard’s face.

She continues to die, and all Byleth can do is watch from a distance that furthers with every pulse.

She continues to die, and that is all Byleth remembers.

She continues to die, and time breaks at last.

It is Byleth who dies, and she is against the grass, heaving like it is her only acceptable response.

The sun is bright and beautiful, and she feels its rays caressing her wounds. There is a wind slipping in and out of her body, leaving lingering sensations that she wants to cling to.

They all hover over her, as she did for them. She feels wet drops dripping down her face, arms, chest – everyone is there, and she finally looks at their faces with the past gone, and they are full of flesh and vibrant, and she smiles. It is Edelgard who holds her, creating noises that Byleth wants silenced. It is her voice that calls over the nightmares of her failures, cleansing them like blood in a river.

She is held so close as Linhardt and Dorothea are shouting incantations. Petra lends them her strength, clutching their shoulders to keep them from collapsing. Hubert is behind Edelgard, his expression covered by his hair. She can see him trembling. Bernadetta is a spectacle of quiet bravery, the opposite of Hubert. Caspar and Ferdinand are doing everything and nothing, and she appreciates them nonetheless.

Edelgard is the one she hears clearly, her drowned out murmurs over the cacophony of everything she loves sliding into her expelling bloodstream. Every word is felt and she feels it all, and all she can do is sit there and sink deep into lilac eyes that threaten to shut themselves from the world.

Byleth does not remember a time where she saves Edelgard, she realizes. She does not remember breaking through the endless tunnel and reaching her before her beauty is gone from the world.

She forgets these thoughts, for the first time today, and instead accepts that her eyes are still there to put every flower she has gifted Edelgard to shame.

And it feels so good to finally relax.

The noises escalate when she does this, and Edelgard’s face, masked in blood and dirt, is nothing but fear. Byleth wishes nothing more than to reach up and brush it away, but she cannot remember a time where she has felt anything in her hands.

There is a pressure in her head as Edelgard curls in, and her voice continues to replace the flowing blood.

There is a thud somewhere far away, but Edelgard does little to react. Everything else does. Dorothea is the first to disappear, and Petra follows her. Their voices still mingle in the world around her, whisking away in the wind. Linhardt is stricken, and he pushes, harrowed and tired before he is forced to follow in their footsteps. Caspar does nothing but accept it with slumped shoulders. Bernadetta holds her front to the last smile. Ferdinand is kicking as he is forced away, but the wind does not tolerate his actions. Hubert, for the first time since she has met him, is frowning, soft and genuine, and all that is left of him is a tear.

Edelgard is all that remains as the world chips away piece by piece, like dried paint on an old house. She continues to hold Byleth and Byleth realizes it feels so good as the last piece chips away.

Byleth feels again, and she looks deep inside for that flicker. She pushes, but time does not lurch. It is stagnant, and Byleth understands everything.

And all she can do is listen to the ticking as it crawls to a stop, and Edelgard is finally gone.

**Author's Note:**

> I mean, I hope it was enjoyable. I was very much in a Fire Emblem mood when I wrote this initially, and because of my desire to be mean to characters I love, I made everyone die... technically. A bit of a note as well, Byleth manages to turn back time before death takes her away. She has enough motor actions and instincts to react quickly enough before the paralysis that generally comes from shock affects her, also considering that she doesn't feel the shock anymore...
> 
> I'm not a nice person. But, hey, to rewind to that William Blake quote, this life's a fiction! I know that's not inherently what it means, but I felt like being funny.
> 
> Seriously though, considering how surface level this is, waxing more poetic than telling a story, I hope you guys found some enjoyment with this. It's not meant to be anything more than that: a story to read and have some fun with. I know there are a good few stories that have Byleth go back in time enough that something in the space-time continuum fractures and splits, introducing new elements that Byleth has to contend with, but I always asked myself: what if time just... broke?
> 
> Alright, maybe a bit too much explanation. Literally contradicting myself in the same paragraph. It's late where I am, and I still need to finish up my literary essay as this is being published. Have a good one, and don't forget to take care of yourself. :)


End file.
